Pedagogical and Scientific Criteria for Defining Environmental Content of General University Education. Environmental Education Series No. 19.

Overview & Synopsis

It has become common to say that incorporating environmental education into general education mainly means integration of environmental content into the content of general, school, and higher education. This study attempts to identify, examine, and propose a system of criteria for rationally grounded selection of the environmental content of general education, particularly at the level of higher education. The two sets of criteria examined, educational and scientific, are shown to overlap and taken together, to complement one another. The study is intended to be theoretical and not to be used as a practical guide. Chapter 1 centers on the need to educate the general public and prevent environmentally harmful decisions. Chapter 2 gives a brief review of worldwide environmental conditions. Chapter 3 deals with a conceptual framework to determine the environmental content of general education, including the higher education level. This chapter also contains some reflections and considerations of ways and modalities of integrating the environmental dimension into general higher education. Chapter 4 is concerned with several global and regional environmental issues. Selection criteria are defined on the basis of the analysis of issues identified. A selected bibliography contains 73 entries. (LZ)